Anyone have this misfortune? A few times while playing around on guitar I've come up with something that sounds good and then realize that it's very similar to a riff from a song I've heard before. Usually I'll look up some tabs to see how similar it is, and often it's differant frets and strings I'm not sure whether or not to just use the riff or trash it.

Haha, I'm sure I've done this a few times or even when I'm writing a riff, I find one that sounds very similar to something I've been listening to a lot recently. Especially when doing atmospheric riffs, for me, that is. But here's the thing though, so much bands use the same progressions and scaling that even when you don't try to sound like anything, if you searched hard enough, you will probably find something that sounds similar. Writing a 100% original riff is definitely one of the harder things to do when writing music, but I tend to not think about it.

Well...you can always invert it or something hehehe...

Yeah sometimes inverting it can work, I usually try to alter it in some way because the frets I would use for the accidental rip off still sound good.
So far I've accidentally mimicked a riff from Carpathian Forest's track "Knokkelman" which I was alot further down the neck on and just added some hammer-ons and an extra note, and then last night I came up with an intro very similar to Darkthrone's begining of "Rust" and with the Rust sound alike I was trying to do something totally differant and messed up what I was playing.

haha i have done this a few times aswell i feel so bad becuase i thought i had some great riffs to find out it just like a big bands riffs haha

me and my bandmate were screwing around with some J.S. Bach music notes, and he accidentally turned them upside down and played them. Sounded surprisingly good

i only do that intentionally lol i tend to screw around on the guitar and suddenly i realise.. 'oh yeah, it's that riff from that song!' or something

Transpose it, reverse it, add notes, change the speed, change a couple notes... it's really hard to not make a rip off... but when I do, I just modify the hell out of it, until it sounds nothing like the original song. I came up with a riff last week that somebody comented sounded like "Paint It Black", but with added harmony, and hte speed at which it's played, and some added on parts it could never be compared to the actual riff.... does what I'm saying make sense?

Written by Haightredy on 29.05.2008 at 05:19

....and some added on parts it could never be compared to the actual riff.... does what I'm saying make sense?

I think that if the chord was in the same key as the original riff, or still has the same progressions in a relative (harmony) key, it could be likely that the riff would sound similar. But why on earth would someone purposely try to avert the riff is beyond me. Not that I really care though, I guess I find it easier to make riffs from improvising. For me, sitting down and trying to change a riff written by someone seems like a lot more work.

This happened to me a ton of times. I worry a little bit that in the future my band creates a song that we like and then people hate us because it was really a rip and we didn't know it!

That happened to me, at least twice. The first riff I was really proud to have composed was in fact a metallish version of a boss soundtrack from Zelda (III).
The second time was different, since I came up with a riff and found a song with something similar afterwards, I mean, I had never listened to that song before. And the song was Electric Eye by Judas Priest. Only Judas' version was slightly better so I just dropped this riff of mine and didn't bother changing it.

I've never had that happen to me before, although once was playing around with some freestyle thrash rhythms and I accidentally played the intro to Megadeth's into the lungs of hell. I laughed when I realized what I did.

Written by Lord TJ on 01.06.2008 at 18:08

This happened to me a ton of times. I worry a little bit that in the future my band creates a song that we like and then people hate us because it was really a rip and we didn't know it!

That's my concern too, or to be percieved as a copy cat band.

LOL. Yeah, in my old band we spent like 5 hours writing and perfecting a song we thought was absolutely genius, we were so proud we wrote our first song as a band. Then when me and the bassist left and got into his car and turned on the CD player and we realized our song was identical (not the lyrics, but our vocal arrangements were strikingly similar) to 'Sunsest & Babylon' by WASP. I think its kind of a subconscious thing.

I've gotten into the habit of making sure I didn't make a good riff & ended up replicating something that already exists. Although as some have said a little mod, can go a long way. At first the intial shock comes off as a bit of a drag, but I then decide whether it's worth altering, or better off in the oven...

Some great paragraph I found on another site regarding originality:

Consider this: In classical music, styles of playing and composition changed VERY slowly. Mozart, Haydn and J.S. Bach did NOT care about originality. I know that for those of you who have not studied music history in depth, that may sound strange, but it is the truth. They were not great because they were original, they were simply superior composers. To be great (or even the best) at what you do often has little to do with originality. If being innovative was the key to success then no two great musicians would sound anything alike. We all know this is not true.

Written by Sunioj on 20.06.2008 at 14:41

Some great paragraph I found on another site regarding originality:

Consider this: In classical music, styles of playing and composition changed VERY slowly. Mozart, Haydn and J.S. Bach did NOT care about originality. I know that for those of you who have not studied music history in depth, that may sound strange, but it is the truth. They were not great because they were original, they were simply superior composers. To be great (or even the best) at what you do often has little to do with originality. If being innovative was the key to success then no two great musicians would sound anything alike. We all know this is not true.

well that might be the case, but really, it's not like Bach for example had a lot of guys who were before him, so he didn't even need to think about being original, he just sat there and wrote. now there are millions of bands all trying to be new and 'the next big thing' and it's 100x harder to create something fresh.

Written by Valentin B on 22.06.2008 at 19:33

Written by Sunioj on 20.06.2008 at 14:41

Some great paragraph I found on another site regarding originality:

Consider this: In classical music, styles of playing and composition changed VERY slowly. Mozart, Haydn and J.S. Bach did NOT care about originality. I know that for those of you who have not studied music history in depth, that may sound strange, but it is the truth. They were not great because they were original, they were simply superior composers. To be great (or even the best) at what you do often has little to do with originality. If being innovative was the key to success then no two great musicians would sound anything alike. We all know this is not true.

well that might be the case, but really, it's not like Bach for example had a lot of guys who were before him, so he didn't even need to think about being original, he just sat there and wrote. now there are millions of bands all trying to be new and 'the next big thing' and it's 100x harder to create something fresh.

While this is true to some extent, I think the writer does have a point in saying that it's how you use the quote unquote, unoriginal elements when making something that stands out rather than trying to 100% focus on creating something original and unheard of.

Opinions vary on the metal scene these days just as you said with many bands trying to follow their models. But to me, I think that the metal scene is actually at the best its ever been. Why? Because if a band can manage to create something within the genre (and elements) they are playing in and actually stand out amongst all the mediocre wannabe's, then that band has achieved a feat.

IMO, this means that perhaps the mentioned band has actually created something that is more passionate and organic then the idols of that genre.

My guitar teacher told me there is an unwritten 5 note rule. If you write a riff with more than five notes that sound like another riff, you should either change it or scrap it.

Has happened to me a few times, but what I usually do is: if it sounds quite the same or exactly as another song, I either skip it or change it a little bit to sound different (substitute musical notes, tempos, etc.) or if it's not that obvious, I just leave it as it is. Eventually when one is writing music, you'll get to hear some "familiar sounding" riffs or melodies, but I guess that's due to our own musical influences. I.e.: I have written several original rock/metal/thrash songs for my band, and on one we can hear Megadeth's style, Slayer on another, and of course there are the ones that are truly original.

While experimenting with tritones, I got something that is very EVIL and sounds real GOOD. But then I recognized it was similar to Diamond Head's Am I Evil.

I wrote the intro riff to Death - Spirit Crusher on the guitar. If anyone knows it, its the stacked fifth riff that ascends and then descends a half step up. I think what we listen to often has an influence on what we write, whether we are aware or not. I wasn't even aware it was a death riff because I had barely listened to the album. But, heres the interesting part. Daniel Mongrain of Martyr released Hopeless Hopes in 1997 (i could be wrong on the year) and and I read in an interview that he met Chuck at a show and gave him a copy of Hopeless Hopes. The song Inner Peace has that same riff in it.
So, I think i came up with the riff from listening to so much of Hopeless Hopes, not Death. I kept playing it and saying how Martyr it sounded haha. I even recorded some stuff with it and then played another riff after it, that was constructed in essentially the same way Martyr had constructed a riff in that song. So, Chuck either listened to Inner Peace and purposely stole the riff (as Mongrain suspected, maybe as a way of letting Mongrain know he dug the album), or most likely, he played the same riff by mistake just like I did.

Martyr's song and Death's song are both very different. I think people get too crazy over riff stealing sometimes. Half the time its probably not on purpose. Also, Id rather hear a song composed of 5 or 6 stolen riffs with a very unique sound, rather than a band that sounds just like Metallica. Stealing a riff isn't necessarily a good thing imo, but its much better than stealing a bands sound.

...keep playing and pretend like nothing happened....
nah i'm kidding ...i always tend to change it ...

I've done it when I make riffs to my punkrock band but every punk song is a rip off of another punk song

In my opinion, it is only a true rip-off if you do it on purpose. If two people have the same idea they can both honestly say it's their own idea. Don't get me wrong, if you catch it and it's going to be too obvious you'll probably want to change it, but it doesn't make you a rip-off if you honestly came up with it on your own.

I made an intentional rip off once i was learning shadows fall's casting shade but i couldnt play the chorus so i made my own up!

This happens to me every once in a while, my friends usually call it out saying that it usually sounds like something either from the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Metallica... Pretty bizarre.

But, funny story, my friend and I were writing material a few years back and one day he calls me saying that he came up with a wicked solo for this one song. So, later I come over and we're playing through it, when he starts playing a part of the solo from Metallica's One. I stopped him and asked what he was doing and he said that was the solo he had written...

Which, is crazy, and I told him that it was Metallica, he didn't believe me.

APPARENTLY he had (somehow) never heard 'One' all the way through, and when he did, he cried.

It was in the same key and everything...

Yeah, I thought I did came up with something veeery good....and...I did. I found myself playin witching hour. xD

"This is goood " one day later "Aaah, yeah I came up with that good riffin yesterday" *playin* "Wait! What!? This is pretty much witching hour -.-"

Today, while I was playing, I just discovered that I ripped off Amon Amarth's Helmod's Ride To Hel main riff!

I ripped off decapitated before I had even heard of them